Opinion
We’ve already Taken the 14 Steps to Fascism
It’s clear, we have already walked quite a ways down the path to outright fascism. Anyone that says otherwise is lying to your face. We’re there.
Just as a refresher, I looked up the 19 year old article by author Dr. L. Britt. In it he lays out the 14 step program all authoritarians inevitably use to lock a society down. It’s predictable, tried and demonstrably true.
And we’ve done all of them.
Dr. Britt’s list includes:
- Powerful and continuing nationalism.
- Rampant sexism.
- Obsession with national security.
- Religion and Governments intertwining.
- Protection of corporate power.
- Controlled mass media.
- Fraudulent elections.
Along the way, Naomi Wolf explains there are some procedural details that must also be achieved. In another decade old article, she suggests we have already:
- Invoked internal and external enemies.
- Created a gulag. Guantanamo anyone?
- Developed thugs. Who were the guys that stormed the Capitol?
It’s clear, we have already walked quite a ways down the path to outright fascism. Anyone that says otherwise is lying to your face. We’re there.
All that remains is for the would be authoritarians to seize the levers of power and we will be fully entrenched in our own brand of American Fascism. A merger of corporations and the state, facilitated by the elites with the express intent to drain the lifeblood out of the proles.
We are the proles.
What comes next?
Dissent will be stifled
Comedians disappear. They get scared to speak out against the intolerance of the authoritarians. All it takes is for one public personality to be accused of something unprovable and stupid.
Maybe being unpatriotic. Maybe being Black or Jewish. Or maybe just being an immigrant. And when they disappear, the rest go silent.
Activists and will get rounded up for the same reasons. Opposition politicians. Journalists. Bloggers. Atheists.
No one will be allowed to speak out against the ruling elite.
Gay men are already being called pedophiles. Teachers are being told they are brainwashing children. Women are being called murderers. One way or another, all opposition to the authoritarians will be demonized, targeted and silenced.
Fear will be instilled among the population.
Know those thugs going around larping at being active military? The ones with the scary guns that make their way to peaceful protests and intimidate voters?
How about the ones that hide their faces behind balaclavas and march under the banner of patriotism?
They don’t arise spontaneously, they are encouraged by ideology and whipped into a nationalist frenzy. Now they’re spoiling for a fight.
Members of similar groups are known to infiltrate law enforcement and are capable of targeting activists by using random incarcerations and releases. It’s a terror tactic.
It has already happened during the Trump administration.
People will save themselves
People in out groups will try to hide.
Maybe they’ll attempt to get to the woods, or to vanish in beaten down cities where there might be less of a law enforcement presence.
Historically they have retreated into basements and attics, abandoned train tunnels and sewers — sneaking out only for food. Nothing here is new, its happened in the past and is on the rise today.
See that van life trend? It will explode. People will be on the move continuously. We’re already broke and being made even broker by inflation and out of control corporate greed. With evictions and spiking mortgage rates, people will have little choice but find a way to be out of sight. Being on the move will help.
People will pretend.
How do you disappear within a crowd? You become like the crowd. You’ll dress like them. You’ll wave the flag and the cross. You’ll buy guns and threaten people. You’ll comply.
You’ll report your neighbors for having the wrong religion. Or the wrong color. Or even thinking the wrong thoughts. You might man the prisons or drive the cop cars. You might even pull the triggers on the guns that keep the peace.
When it comes right down to you or them, most people choose themselves. It’s human nature. People almost always do whatever it takes to save themselves.
People will flee.
It’s happening already. Oppressed minority groups are talking about leaving Red states. Young people will move where they can be free.
Red States will employ harsher and stricter control of their populations to extract what wealth remains. They’re already attempting to stop women leaving certain states, they’ll simply expand this until there are policed borders between neighboring regions.
Make no mistake, if the authoritarians gather enough political power, they intend to go Federal. Then there will be no escape from the long arm of the new laws.
Christian zealots are ramping up insane rhetoric. They have openly discussed executing gays and are busy running for political office to subdue any that fall short of the glory of their god.
Given half a chance, they will shoehorn their way into drafting and passing legislation that will finally turn America into a theocracy.
What will you do when the authoritarians attempt to seize power?
We must vote.
The last step that must be taken to instill an authoritarian government is to seize power — usually by fraudulent elections. On January 6th 2021, the first attempt was made to do exactly that.
All we can do now, barring active resistance, is to vote like we’ve never voted before.
We’re voting for our own lives. For our sanity. For the lives of our children, our grandchildren, the beasts out in the field and the planet just beyond.
If we do not stop them at the ballot box, civil American life is done and the world itself will have to fight another fascist regime. We will become the enemy, the enemy is us.
I hope you see what’s just over the horizon. We can’t afford to mess this up and we’re almost out of choices.
It’s just a thought,
Mitch.
